Dear Theo (Preface)

Vincent van Gogh was one of the world’s loneliest souls. For the greater part of his days he lived by himself, without friends or companions. There was rarely anyone to whom he could confide, to whom he could relate his joys and sufferings, with whom he might share his ambitions and dreams. In the last ten years of life, from the age of twenty-seven to thirty-seven, during which time he slaved at and conquered the art of painting, he was filled to bursting with all the beautiful scenes he saw in nature, the profound humanity he read in the face of a peasant; he longed with intense eagerness for a fellow being to talk to, to tell everything he thought and felt about his turbulent life and slowly maturing craft. Yet seldom could he find anyone who was interested in him as a friend, who could understand what he was trying to say or do.

That is why the AUTOBIOGRAPHY came into being.

There was one man on earth who understood Vincent, who encouraged him in his work, provided him with the supplies and the money necessary to continue his painting, who had an inexhaustible fund of the love which, above all things, Vincent so desperately needed: his brother Theo.

Each night, when the fourteen to sixteen hours of drawing and painting were over, Vincent sat down with pen and ink and poured out his heart to Theo. There was no idea or thought too small, no happening too trivial, no element of his craft too insignificant, no scene too unimportant for Vincent to communicate to the only other living person who considered his every word and feeling precious.

Thus Vincent wrote the story of his own life.

Theo died only six months after his brother. His young wife, Johanna, came into possession of most of Vincent’s drawings and paintings, and a desk drawer full of letters: for Theo could never bring himself to part with any line that Vincent had ever drawn or written.

Despite the fact that Johanna van Gogh had to keep a boarding-house to support herself and her infant son, she spent years of her life fighting for a place for Vincent’s writings to Theo. It was indeed a labor of love.

Vincent’s letters have never been printed in America, but in 1927-29, Houghton Mifflin Company imported a few hundred sets from the English publisher in London. The work was released in three handsome volumes, totaling 1670 close-packed pages. Unfortunately, the costs were so high that the three-volume set had to be priced at $22.50, which made it purchasable only by wealthy individuals and heavily endowed libraries, a development which would have sorely distressed Vincent. In addition, the volumes have been unavailable at any price for several years.

Even if the set had been published at a modest price, the very bulk of 1670 pages would have made it extremely difficult for Americans, who have so many external obligations, who have been so hard-pressed to earn a living, and who enjoy so little genuine leisure, to read.

After Johanna van Gogh’s death in 1927, Vincent’s manuscripts became the property of V. W. van Gogh, Johanna’s and Theo’s son. V. W. van Gogh has given the blessing of the van Gogh family to this project, on which I have been working since 1930, at which time I began studying Vincent’s letters for material for ‘Lust for Life.” It has been my purpose to keep in every line Vincent wrote that has retained its beauty, significance, and importance, and to eliminate the countless pages of repetition, unimportant detail and comment which have since lost both meaning and value.

My aim has been to edit the 1670 pages of material down to a swiftly flowing, continuous, normal-sized book which everyone can read and enjoy, to be published at a price which every book love can afford, thus for the first time bringing Vincent’s written work to the general public.

It is my humble opinion that Vincent was as great a writer and philosopher as he was a painter, that he was endowed with one of the most comprehensive gifts of understanding and expression that it has ever been the burden of one man to carry. I sincerely feel that Vincent’s writings will bring as much beauty, vision, and emotional richness into the lives of his readers as his paintings brought to the hundreds of thousands of Americans, a considerable proportion of whom had never seen or been interested in paining before, who stood transfixed in front of the glowing canvases and saw unfold before their very eyes a new, more beautiful, and more meaningful world.

No line has ever given me more pleasure to write than this one in which I have the good fortune to be able to express my gratitude to my wife, Jean Stone, for her collaboration on this work.

— Irving Stone

January 6, 1937